Jo Ractliffe (South African, born 1961) Woman and her baby, Roque Santeiro market, 2007 From the series Terreno Ocupado Inkjet print, 2015 On loan from the artist, courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg © Jo Ractliffe. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg
Rich in diamonds and oil, Angola was one of the last countries in Africa to receive its independence from a colonial power. It began a thirteen-year war for independence from Portugal. Immediately following independence in 1975, the Angolan Civil War broke out, raging for 27 years and claiming half a million lives before finally ceasing in 2002.
The war had taken is toll on the living as well, with a refugee crisis affecting 4.28 million people—one third of the population. The country was economically and politically devastated. The nation suffered a crisis of amputees caused the millions of landmines. Most Angolans lacked access to basic medical care, and more than half lacked access to water. One third of the children born died before the age of five, and the nation’s life expectancy was less than 40 years of age.
Jo Ractliffe (South African, born 1961) Roadside stall on the way to Viana, 2007 From the series Terreno Ocupado Inkjet print, 2015 On loan from the artist, courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg © Jo Ractliffe. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg
Refugees fled the countryside and flocked to the cities, where now half the nation’s population currently reside, creating a horrific sense of displacement while leaving behind the world they knew. South African artist Jo Ractliffe has been photographing the landscape of Angola and her homeland for the past ten years, looking at the sites of conflict after the war has passed, and asking the question, “What remains?”
Jo Ractliffe (South African, born 1961) Unidentified memorial in the desert, south of Namibe I, 2009 From the series As Terras do Fim do Mundo Inkjet print, 2015 On loan from the artist, courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg © Jo Ractliffe. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg
Ractliffe’s eerier black and white photographs are on view in “The Aftermath of Conflict: Jo Ractliffe’s Photographs of Angola and South Africa” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through March 6, 2016. The 23 works on loan from the artist include single images, diptychs, and triptychs selected from three photographic series: Terreno Ocupado (2007), As Terras do Fim do Mundo (2010), and The Borderlands (2013).
Jo Ractliffe (South African, born 1961) Decommissioned military outpost, Schmidtsdrift, 2012 From the series The Borderlands Inkjet prints, 2015 On loan from the artist, courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg © Jo Ractliffe. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg
Focusing on the aftermath of the Angolan Civil War and the intertwined conflict known in South Africa as the “Border War,” Ractliffe’s photographs are disquieting, evoking a profound feeling of dispossession, history, memory, and erasure. The exhibition highlights Ractliffe’s engagement with the land and structures of Angola’s capital, Luanda, as well as with places in the Angolan and South African countryside where unmarked mass graves, minefields, and former military testing sites reveal the complex traces of the past in the present.
The essence of death lingers in the air, invisible to the naked eye but felt in the heart. There is loss, a profound sense of loss that makes Ractliffe’s photographs challenging. There is no beauty here, no aesthetic distraction from hollow emptiness of death. Thee isn’t even destruction to lull us into a false sense of narrative. There is only what is left on this desolate landscape lingering below under the high African sun.
Jo Ractliffe (South African, born 1961) Drying fish on the beach at Ilha, 2007 From the series Terreno Ocupado Inkjet print, 2015 On loan from the artist, courtesy Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg © Jo Ractliffe. Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg
“The Aftermath of Conflict” has been organized to coincide with the special exhibition “Kongo: Power and Majesty”, which focuses on works created by artists in present-day Angola between the 16th and 19th centuries (on view at the Metropolitan Museum through January 3, 2016). The landscapes captured by Ractliffe consider a more recent chapter of Angola’s history.
“The Aftermath of Conflict: Jo Ractliffe’s Photographs of Angola and South Africa” is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art now through March 6, 2016.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
